The $5,000 Second Prize was awarded to Drs. Jonathan Kaufman and Brian Keating of the University of California, San Diego, and Dr. Brad Johnson of Columbia University, for their work entitled “Precision Tests of Parity Violation Over Cosmological Distances”, recognized by the judging panel as “an inventive proposal to significantly enhance cosmic microwave background polarization measurement, enabling new potential tests of fundamental physics.”

In our work, we motivate the use of current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization telescopes for studying parity violating and Lorentz-invariance violating physics, and we propose a new calibration device to accurately separate these affects from instrumental noise.

Dr. Buchalter stated:

“These inaugural prize winners represent the kind of innovative thinking and novel ideas that might lead to huge leaps forward in our understanding of the universe.”

Seattle, WA – January 6, 2015 (9:20 AM PST) – The winners of the 2014 Buchalter Cosmology Prize were announced today at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington. The annual prize, created by Dr. Ari Buchalter in 2014, seeks to reward new ideas or discoveries that have the potential to produce a breakthrough advance in our understanding of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe.

The $10,000 First Prize was awarded to Dr. Marina Cortês of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, and the Centro de Astronomia e Astrofısica da Universidade de Lisboa and Dr. Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, for their work entitled “The Universe as a Process of Unique Events” published in Physical Review D and recognized by the judging panel as “a remarkable approach for introducing the irreversible flow of time into the foundations of physics.”

The $5,000 Second Prize was awarded to Drs. Jonathan Kaufman and Brian Keating of the University of California, San Diego, and Dr. Brad Johnson of Columbia University, for their work entitled “Precision Tests of Parity Violation Over Cosmological Distances”, recognized by the judging panel as “an inventive proposal to significantly enhance cosmic microwave background polarization measurement, enabling new potential tests of fundamental physics.”

The $2,500 Third Prize was awarded to Dr. Carroll Wainwright of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) and Department of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Dr. Matthew Johnson of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York University and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; Dr. Hiranya Peiris of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; Dr. Anthony Aguirre of the SCIPP and Department of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Dr. Luis Lehner of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; and Dr. Steven Liebling of the Department of Physics at Long Island University, for their work entitled “Simulating the Universe(s): from Cosmic Bubble Collisions to Cosmological Observables with Numerical Relativity”, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and recognized by the judging panel as “a significant advance in linking theoretical predictions with potentially observable signatures of bubble universes in a multiverse cosmology.”

Dr. Buchalter, a former astrophysicist turned entrepreneur, was inspired to create the prize based on his own research and experience in cosmology. “I believe that significant breakthroughs in cosmology still lie ahead of us, but to get there, we may need to alter, challenge, or even break some currently accepted paradigms,” said Dr. Buchalter. “These inaugural prize winners represent the kind of innovative thinking and novel ideas that might lead to huge leaps forward in our understanding of the universe.”

The prestigious judging panel for the prize included several theoretical physicists noted for their work in cosmology, including Dr. Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College, and Dr. Joao Magueijo of Imperial College London.